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The Pandemic Drives MCH, or Maternal and Child Hell

"CL Society 408: Mother and child" by francisco_osorio is licensed under CC BY 2.0

During the years when I worked internationally on MCH—Maternal and Child Health—our mission was to save the lives of mothers and children in the so-called developing world through several primary health care practices. The twin engines driving child survival were immunization and diarrheal disease control. Family planning was the start point for women’s health.

Today, MCH takes on new meaning: Maternal and Child Hell. Its two driving engines are lack of childcare and mothers driven out of the workforce because of it. The crisis in childcare is not new, but it is exacerbated by the pandemic. Even affluent families who can afford reliable childcare are feeling the effect.

The Child Care Is Essential Act, introduced in the Senate in June, would help if Mitch McConnell and Republicans weren’t in the majority. Covid-driven, it provides for $50 billion in appropriations for a Child Care Stabilization Fund to award grants to childcare providers during the public health crisis. Without that Act many facilities will close.

If corporations, universities, and other workplaces don’t offer onsite daycare, who will fill the gap? It’s a difficult question for people who work freelance or who are unemployed but looking for work and, of course, for undocumented workers. 

According to the Department of Labor, thirty million people have lost their jobs since Covid-19 appeared. For working moms, already struggling with the work/home balance, this could have long-term negative consequences, including lost opportunities, less upward mobility in the workplace, lower incomes (impacting Social Security and pensions), and difficulty getting back into the job market.

A recent Wall Street Journal article, highlighting how women’s careers could be derailed because of the pandemic, noted that “juggling work and family life has never been easy.” For mothers, the pandemic makes coping especially exhausting as traditional gender roles and pay disparities re-emerge as issues. Without childcare, working moms are forfeiting or delaying careers because they are still prime caretakers of families and children.

As Joan Williams, head of the Center for Worklife Law at the University of California, said in the WSJ article, “Opening economics without childcare is a recipe for a generational wipeout of mother’s careers.”

Women who try to maintain careers or jobs often face situations like a woman in San Diego did when she was fired because the firm said her young children were interrupting Zoom meetings.  She sued. At Florida State University things didn’t go that far. Following an email to all employees that the university would “return to normal policy and [would] no longer allow employees to care for children while working remotely,” the hue and cry forced FSU to back down and issue an apology.

Last March 2,000 mothers working for Amazon organized an advocacy campaign, urging the company to provide a backup child care benefit, as other big corporations like Apple and other corporate giants have done. They are not the only ones to organize like this, but in most cases the results are not yet clear.

What is clear is that the child care system in this country is broken. It has been since women rejected confining their role to marriage and motherhood and joined the growing ranks of working women. Our public policy has never caught up with that sociological change. Nor have we realized our obligation and co-responsibility for raising children, while committing to work/home balance for the good of American families.

There is an economic gain to seeing the light, however.  Child care allows parents to work, and their working contributes to economic growth. According to the Center for American Progress, American businesses lose more than $12 billion annually because of challenges workers face in seeking childcare and the cost of lost earnings, productivity, and revenue due to the childcare crisis totals an estimated $57 billion each year.

Along with businesses and other employers, states clearly have a role to play in establishing family friendly benefits for every family, but especially for low income families and families of color. Federal action is also needed, and that action is supported by voters across the political landscape.

With half of Americans living in so-called “child care deserts,” long term policy changes are imperative. In addition to including families at all levels of society in the national conversation, government must move beyond relying on disparate organizations to plug the holes. There needs to be a substantial shift in corporate culture such that universal childcare is the norm. Without that the very nature of “family” will favor only the affluent, as so much of American policy has done already. We need to understand and act on the “intersectionality” of race, gender, and economics, which are all part of the fabric of social justice.

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Elayne Clift writes from Saxtons River, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

FOR AEOO's FRIDAY FEEL: Everyday is Saturday

Colin McCaffrey - vocals, guitar, viola, bass; Amber deLaurentis - harmonies Tom Cleary - piano ©2020 Miss Demeanor Music / Hermit’s Gold Publishing

Our good friend, Diana Levine, wrote this beautiful song, Pandemic Saturday, and her good friend, Colin, recorded it here with Amber deLaurentis and Tom Cleary. See it here and on YouTube. Do share it with people you love!